Sunday, February 3, 2013

10 Tips For Time Management in a Multitasking Situation

So here are 10 tips to make you better at managing your work:1. Don’t leave email sitting in your in box.“The abilityto quickly process and synthesize information and turn it into actions is one ofthe most emergent skills of the professional world today,” says Mann. Organizeemail in file folders. If the message needs more thought, move it to your to-dolist. If it’s for reference, print it out. If it’s a meeting, move it to yourcalendar.

2. Admit multitasking is bad.For people whodidn’t grow up watching TV, typing out instant messages and doing homework allat the same time, multitasking is deadly. But it decreases everyone’sproductivity, no matter who they are. “A 20-year-old is less likely to feeloverwhelmed by demands to multitask, but young people still have a loss ofproductivity from multitasking,” says Trapani.

3. Do the most important thing first.

4. Check your email on a schedule.“It’s noteffective to read and answer every email as it arrives. Just because someone cancontact you immediately does not mean that you have to respond to themimmediately,” says Dan Markovitz, president of the productivity consultingfirm TimeBack Management, “People want a predictable response, not an immediateresponse.” So as long as people know how long to expect an answer to take, andthey know how to reach you in an emergency, you can answer most types of emailjust a few times a day.

5. Keep web site addresses organized.Use book markingservices like del.icio.us to keep track of web sites. Instead of having randomnotes about places you want to check out, places you want to keep as areference, etc., you can save them all in one place, and you can search andshare your list easily.

6. Know when you work best.Industrial designer JeffBeene does consulting work, so he can do it any time of day. But, he says, “Itry to schedule things so that I work in the morning, when I am the mostproductive.” Each person has a best time. You can discover yours by monitoringyour productivity over a period of time. Then you need to manage your scheduleto keep your best time free for your most important work.

7. Think about keystrokes.If you’re on a computerall day, keystrokes matter because efficiency matters. “On any given day, aninformation worker will do a dozen Google searchers,” says Trapani. “How manykeystrokes does it take? Can you reduce it to three? You might save 10 seconds,but over time, that builds up.”

8. Make it easy to get started.We don’t haveproblems finishing projects, we have problems starting them,” says Mann. Herecommends you “make a shallow on-ramp.”

9. Organize your to-do list every day.If you don’t knowwhat you should be doing, how can you manage your time to do it?

10. Dare to be slow.Remember that a good time manageractually responds to some things more slowly than a bad time manager would. Forexample, someone who is doing the highest priority task is probably notanswering incoming email while they’re doing it. As Markovitz writes: “Obviouslythere are more important tasks than processing email. Intuitively, we all knowthis. What we need to do now is recognize that processing one’s work (evaluatingwhat’s come in and how to handle it) and planning one’s work are alsomission-critical tasks.”